From e-commerce idea to full value-chain control

The story begins in 2020 with a simple insight. Buying plants was often either a supermarket afterthought or a confusing garden-centre experience. Customers lacked guidance, quality was inconsistent and many plants failed soon after purchase. The founders saw an opportunity to build a digital brand that would remove this uncertainty and shake up the slow, fragmented market.

feey started as a modern online shop for houseplants with a strong focus on education and service. Instead of just listing products, the team built tools and content to guide beginners through selection and care. A plant finder, email support before and after purchase, a plant encyclopaedia and a “plant doctor” chat service turned a one-time purchase into an ongoing relationship. Within a short time, feey became a reference point for digitally savvy plant lovers in Switzerland, Germany and Austria.

Success on the front end soon revealed limits in the traditional supply chain. Many plants still came from fast-growing imports treated with synthetic pesticides and transported over long distances. To deliver more stable quality and live up to its sustainability claims, feey decided to move beyond pure trading. The company began investing in its own production and research, shifting from an online retailer to an integrated plant producer and logistics specialist.

A plant ecosystem built on science and logistics

This strategic shift forms the basis of today’s product ecosystem. Indoor plants remain the core of the assortment, with many varieties refined or grown in-house to improve resilience and longevity. Outdoor plants extend the relationship through the seasons. Accessories such as pots, fertilisers, plant lamps and textiles turn individual purchases into coherent living-space concepts. More recently, cut flowers have become an additional pillar, with hand-tied bouquets shipped via parcel using the same specialised logistics that made plant shipping at scale possible.

The vertical farm in St. Gallen sits at the centre of this ecosystem. Here, feey grows Swiss-made houseplants without chemical-synthetic pesticides, using proprietary substrates and nutrient formulations. To build a deep knowledge base, feey carries out in-house R&D led by one of their co-founders and a biologist with an ETH Zurich background.. Light, humidity and irrigation are tuned to each plant type. By gradually acclimatising plants to household conditions, the farm is designed not only to produce healthy plants all-year round, but to produce plants that stay healthy once they reach customers’ homes.

From St. Gallen, plants move to the fulfilment centre in Uzwil. There they are acclimated and prepared for dispatch under carefully controlled conditions. feey has developed custom packaging that stabilises pots and foliage, protects roots and minimises stress during transport. Trucks run several times a day to Swiss Post centres and to a nearby DHL hub across the German border, enabling fast delivery throughout Switzerland and the wider DACH region. These steps are part of a logistics system specifically developed for living plants – fundamentally different from traditional parcel shipping and designed to keep plants healthy in transit.

feey

From online plant shop to a Swiss-made, research-driven plant company